.....than those privatized, government contractors
Anyone see this article in yesterday's paper?
"IRS outsources collection of delinquent taxes
By David Cay Johnston
New York Times
"Within two weeks, the IRS will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers...to three collection agencies.
"The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, is the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies...Although IRS officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.
"The private debt collection program is expected to bring in $1.4 billion over 10 years...
BUT
"By hiring more revenue officers, the I.R.S. could collect more than $9 billion each year..."
The article went on to say while more IRS agents could bring in more delinquent taxes at a cost of 3 cents on the each dollar collected, private contractors will collect less and keep 22-24 fuckin' cents of each dollar collected! Source: New York Times
Best we just ignore that, because we can't do anything about it, right?
I guess when congress and the president are beholding to special interests in the accounting industry, as they are to just about every goddamned industry lobbyist stuffing their rear ends with cash, the government has to rob Peter (ah, that'd be us, the citizens) to pay Paul (ah, that'd be special interest groups the government owes their collective asses to).
Apologies for my language this morning. Maybe it's indicative of something, like my fuckin' outrage? Huh? Huh? Ya think?
2 comments:
it is time we let go of the IRS system altogether IMHO
but to have them outsource tax dodgers - it borders on the absurd
i'm so sick of our government not being run by the big biz's that are running it...
maybe we should just make it a corporation and then it would be accountable to us...
I had just read Paul Krugman's take on this & was spitting! Glad to see I'm not alone, dada (where IS that spittoon?) ...
Krugman called the private collectors "tax farmers", like the medieval monarchs employed. And who are they kidding? The kind of uncollectable debt the IRS will turn over will mostly consist of:
Cases that the IRS knows are weak & they would be lucky to get even a partial amount.
Cases where the entities (individual or business) are so asset-poor, the debt will be impossible to collect at all.
And, oh shite, I JUST realized part of what is being "counted" as revenue by our esteemed govt (you know for purposes of phony budget analysis etc) includes those very same uncollectable IRS debts, of course at the full amount, not the 50% they will be lucky to eventually receive! Gack! D.K.
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